OVO Mobile to bring Chinese Super League to Australia

OVO Mobile has entered into an digital broadcast partnership to bring the Chinese Super League football to Australia.

OVO’s three-year deal with the 16-team Ping An Chinese Super League (CSL) covers all digital and mobile channels and will see all matches aired live on OVOPlay and other OVO channels each season.

All content, which will also include a weekly 30-minute magazine show and highlight clips, will be broadcast with commentary available in English and Mandarin. To mark the launch of CSL in Australia, OVO will provide free-to-stream access to the 2018 season.

Currently broadcast in close to 100 countries, the Chinese Super League is China’s premier professional football competition and attracts an average of close to 24,000 people to live matches.

OVO is building on its audience in Australia and overseas for sport content, which includes drag racing, rugby, badminton, water polo, gymnastics and esports.

“We’ve had more than two million views of content on OVO channels in the past twelve months,” said founder and CEO Matt Jones. “Our audience growth is exponential, and major sporting organisations are starting to take notice.

“As the Chinese Super League has grown and spread internationally, especially over the past few years, the audience of fans in Australia has grown with it. We have every confidence that audience will boom in numbers now that the competition is finally available online in this country.

“With this deal, we’re able to make one of the world’s most popular sporting competitions available in real time on mobile, which we also know is fast becoming the first screen for sport fans.

“This is a massive opportunity for OVOPlay and for Chinese Super League to attract a whole new community of fans to the competition, and our platform. The fact that fans of the sport will be able to stream online data-free if they’re an OVO Mobile subscriber is also a huge bonus.”

With the 2018 Chinese Super League season close to conclusion, OVO will stream a selection of remaining matches live from the coming weekend, and make replays and highlights available on the platform. A full program of live matches, highlights and analysis will be available on OVOPlay from the start of the 2019 season.

The OVO app can be downloaded for iOS and Android, and OVO’s sport content can also be watched online at play.ovo.com.au.